MEDIUM RARE

To quote a balikbayan Alex-in-Wonderland, “Some of your malls are much nicer than what we have back home,” home being the great United States of America. I remembered AiW upon stepping into the mall housing Samsung Performing Arts Theater in  Makati last week. Another excuse to indulge in the pleasures of people-watching, especially when they exit all at the same time, with no crowding while they wait to be picked up by their cars.
At going-home time, traffic was slow but no one blared their horns, everyone patiently standing in a crooked line in the warm evening air. Exiting the theater, many of them no longer masked, a pantomime entirely enjoyable to watch, with the night’s two-in-one treat – American Ballet Theater Studio Company on their toes and Cecile Licad on piano – providing occasion and reason to run into old friends and familiar faces easily recognizable, even with masks on.
Inside the theater, which Ping Valencia described as emitting a La Scala vibe, the most-VIP box was occupied by First Lady Liza A. Marcos and her sister-in-law, Irene M. Araneta. Jimmy Laya was somewhere up there, too. “Balcony,” he said. Seated in the first two rows, orchestra, were New Yorker Lin I. Bildner and Nedy Tantoco (who left during intermission with Patrick Joaquin when her cold grew worse). Lin’s niece, pianist Mariel Ilusorio, chaperoned by her daughter Anita. Carol Sy escorted by her son. Ching Cruz and Leo Espinosa sporting identical cabbage roses on their lapels. Susan Joven long-gowned in black. Inquirer columnist Neni Sta. Romana Cruz craning her neck to see the ballet dancers’ feet. As my friend waited for her driver, the brightly lighted facade of a curvaceous row of restaurants behind and above her shone like a beacon in the night (if there are restaurants, I mused, there must be shops, though not at this late hour).
Indeed, our malling experience has accustomed us – nay, acculturated us – to a lifestyle unique in the world, a multiverse of retail selling, consumer spending, amusements and entertainment, and time killing. Paraphrasing Lord Russell, if you like the time you spend doing nothing, you’re not killing time. And now we have an elegant theater inside a mall, to make time count in an artistic way.